Where Health Reform, Medical Innovation, and Physician Practices Meet - The Leading Voice for Medical Innovation on the Internet

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Alternative therapy - Alternative Medicine Goes Mainstream

Like most physicians who cut their teeth on “scientific medicine”, double blind controlled studies, and “curative medicine,” I’ve been skeptical of alternative medicine because it often has no “scientific” basis, and its outcomes do not stand up under controlled conditions.

My mindset may be wrong. The American public has certainly embraced plant-based diets, meditation, yoga, acupuncture, and herbal remedies. And in January 9 WSJ piece, “ ‘Alternative’ Medicine is Mainstream, “ four passionate alternative medicine advocates – Deepak Chopra, MD, Dean Ornish, MD, Rustum Roy, and Andrew Weil, MD, forcefully argue the heyday of alternative medicine has arrived. As evidence, they cite a conference “Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public,” to be held in mid-February and to sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and the Bravewell Collaborative.

The spokesmen, who have academic connections at Harvard, U. of California, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Arizona, argue that those ignoring life style and diet is causing millions of Americans to die needlessly from obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, and HIV/AIDS. These diseases, with the help of alternative medicine techniques, they claim, could be prevented and even reversed by diet, exercise, behavior change, alternative medicine approaches. They assert what we eat, how we respond to stress, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and social support can be just as powerful as high tech interventions, drugs, and urgery. Furthermore, they point out 95% of every dollar spent on health care is spent after the disease has already occurred.

I have no argument with these self-evident assertions, in theory. But I do have practical questions. Given our freewheeling culture, can integrative medicine reverse or alleviate these diseases, which account for 75% of costs. in sufficient numbers to make a difference in costs? Will the public, conditioned to live and behave as they please, respond to pleas to behave? Will Americans, en masse, turn to alternative medicine, as a means of reducing health costs?

I have my doubts. Still, alternative medicine is worth a try. “It is time,” our alternative medicine spokespeople say, “to move past the debate on alternative vs. traditional medicine, and to focus on what works, what doesn’t, for whom, and under what circumstances. It will take serious government funding to find out.”

Now all we need to do is persuade Congress to spend the money and patients to take personal responsibility, eat and exercise right, try herbal remedies, use yoga, meditate, and use acupuncture for pain. It might work. All we need is a change in mindsets.

3 comments:

Of course we need Americans to change their unhealthy diets and sedentary lifestyles. That's not alternative medicine, that's science-based medicine. What we don't need is for quacks to use diet and lifestyle platforms to slip in adoption of placebo therapies that contribute nothing substantive to alleviating our current disease burdens. These economic times require more strategic investment of tax dollars than "energy healing," homeopathy, and acupuncture. We must lean more heavily than ever on evidenced based therapies and drop the snake oil.

Thank you! Your help is appreciated, Very very interesting article. Thanks for collecting and providing so much info. I am a 54 year old man and I had problems of erectile dysfunction but it already was a stage closed in my life but I find the solution, I bought generic viagra in Online Pharmacy the is the best option to buy Viagra you only must go to the computer and ready!! Be happy and do happy your wife The unsatisfactory sex makes the woman feel inadequate. Choose Generic Viagra and boost your sex-life into the orbit!!!

This is a breath of fresh air, Richard. I think this is the first time that I encountered a doctor in the blogosphere who is willing to open his mind to alternative healing methods. I believe that the proprietors of alternative medicine are not pushing people to believe that the treatments work. They just want the public to see for themselves what alternative medicine can do to help them gain back their health. They just want to let them know that we all have options. Knowing that is already enough for me to give it a try.

The Health Reform Maze

Buy the Book

Book Description: In this first book in a series of four, Richard L. Reece, MD. provides a unique view of the roll out, and run up, of the Affordable Care Act. Reece shows in this book the progress and facets of ObamaCare's marketers and messengers, as the day approached for the launch of health insurance exchanges - the single most public and problematic portion of the new law. This is a must read for anyone who wants to chronicle this attempt to organize more than one-sixth of the U.S. economy by adding layers of federal government control and regulations.

Reece has been writing about U.S. health care for more than 45 years. His knowledge and experience, added to his keen intellect and gift of subtle humor, make this book a valuable part of anyone's collection.